Introduce Yourself

Greetings

I am a consistent MUD player. I really do enjoy being immersed within a world where only your imagination can decide the amount of enjoyment you can get out of a game. The things that most interest me about a MUD is originality--not with just the areas and mobiles, but also the ways of the combat systems... the quests, etc. I am not quite able to find a MUD, besides Achaea, that I would be considered 'home'. Although, Achaea is a great game... it is just so repetitive to me. I look forward to discussing the strengths and weaknesses of features of all types of different MU*'s with the community. I am fairly ignorant of the "in-depth" discussions of MUDs, but I am here to learn. Hopefully, one day I will have enough knowledge to code my own MUD, though I don't see that comming my way anytime soon.

I look forward to discussing the strengths and weaknesses of features of all types of different MU*'s with the community.

That is my favorite type of discussion as well. Fortunately, we seem to be gaining more people lately who are interested in actually discussing these types of things. As a group, we are starting to drown out the trolls, and that's a good thing.

The difficulty in discussing strengths and weaknesses in muds, is that your idea of a weakness might be my idea of a strength. And vice versa.

If you prefer the auto-combat provided by DIKU, you would probably find the MOO-based Inferno to have a very weak combat system, because you have to keep typing "kill mob" for each hit, even though the mob auto-attacks you. You would also need to engage (or be engaged), and advance/retreat - which some people consider too much of a headache to bother with. On the other hand, die-hard fans of this advance/retreat non-automated combat would say there's no fun in just sitting at your computer watching your character kill (or be killed by) a mob, with no need to do anything. If you're a staunch Inferno fan, you would likely find the autocombat of DIKU to be a weakness.

If you are used to Gemstone, you might think permanent death is a deal-breaker in looking for a new game, that it is lame, and a weakness that totally ruins any potential you could have in character development, and therefore not worth the effort. And that without any "exp" to gain, you lose the opportunity to have level-based goals (such as getting a title added to your character's name in text when you hit level 50), and that is one of the things you really love about Gemstone. If you are used to Armageddon, you are more likely to consider that resurrection ruins the chance for assassinations (since your victim just respawns and tells everyone you just killed them), and you might feel that with all this "exp" loss, it takes away from the roleplay and gives too much support to coded OOC mechanisms.

If you are used to paying for a game, you may feel that you are entitled to good customer service, and as a paying customer, you have a very significant input into changes the game chooses to make (or not). Playing a free game, your one and only "right" is to stop playing it. This would be a weakness for the pay-to-play fans. For a free-to-play fan, paying might be a financial burden, or it might make a player feel as though only the "haves" can obtain certain in-game goals, while have-nots are stuck with basic login privileges if it's a pay for perks. Then again, pay for perks people might really love the fact that they don't have to script (bot) their way up to level 50 if they have full time jobs and still want to compete with people who can play all day long, and not having that option makes it difficult for people who don't have that kind of time, to compete with their fellow players.

Die-hard posing MUSHers probably laugh at anyone who claims that any coding other than the almighty pose can possibly be considered roleplaying. While any die-hard H&Ser would giggle helplessly at the thought of waiting 20 minutes for some guy to pump out a 4-paragraph essay on why his character just stood up.

So as you can see, one man's strength is another's weakness. Differences - are easier to discuss, I think. Just don't apply any acronyms to describe anything or you'll end up with an 8-page battle about the correct way to interpret each letter in the acronym.